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Andy and Paula had reached their fundraising goal. Their passion for front-line global missions was contagious and had caused an excitement for reaching the nations to infect the whole church. The date was set, the plane tickets for their family of five were purchased, and travel plans were setting like concrete. Years of preparation were coming to fruition. A Commission Service and Reception were planned for Saturday, their oldest son’s baptism was planned for Sunday, and this family of five would fly out of Logan Airport on Monday to the mission field. Then half them came down with influenza.
I received a call from another member, James, who struggled with alcoholism for as long as I’ve known him. His faith was genuine but raw. I had baptized him just a few years prior. He would go stretches dry and sober, but would inevitably fall off the wagon. Since learning he was slowly dying of prostate cancer, his drinking accelerated. As much as I sought to hold him ac…

C. S. Lewis imagines two people: one Miss Bates, a naturally cranky unkind woman who becomes a Christian and the other Dick Firkin, a naturally friendly kind person who has not yet become a Christian.
“Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works. The question is what Jane’s tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick’s would be like if he became one. Miss Bates and Dick, as a result of natural causes and early upbringing, have certain temperaments: Christianity professes to put both temperaments under new management if they will allow it to do so. What you have a right to ask is whether that management, if allowed to take over, improves the concern. Everyone knows that what is being managed in Dick Firkin’s case is much ‘nicer’ than what is being managed in Miss Bates’. That is not the point. To judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the output but…

"It was [Nyi] who, talking with Mr. Taylor, unexpectedly raised a question the pain of which was not easily forgotten. “How long have you had the good news in England?” he asked unsuspectingly. The young missionary was ashamed to tell him, and vaguely replied that it was several hundreds of years. “What,” exclaimed Nyi in astonishment, “several hundreds of years! Is it possible that you have known about Jesus so long, and only now have come to tell us? My father sought the truth for more than twenty years,” he continued sadly, “and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner?”